The horrifying murders committed by Fred and Rose West are once again being re-examined following Netflix’s stomach-churning documentary, Fred and Rose West: A British Horror Story.
The three-part series is an in-depth look at how the Wests murdered (at least) twelve women – but also explores how their own family was not exempt from their two decades long spree. Among the list of their victims, Fred and Rose murdered two of their own children, Heather and Charmaine.
The Wests had eight other children between them, who faced horrific abuse at the hands of their parents – including Mae, who was Fred and Rose’s youngest daughter together (but not the youngest child, with Rose having numerous children with clients after she became a sex worker).
Like many of her siblings, Mae suffered extreme sexual abuse, with her father attacking her numerous times throughout her childhood. Rose also abused her daughter – once even dragging a knife across her ribcage. The siblings constantly lived in fear that they would end up murdered, with their parents warning them if they misbehaved, they would end up ‘under the patio’ at their home of 25 Cromwell Street like their sister, Heather.
It was these threats that resulted in the Wests’ downfall; police were tipped off about the rumours, which resulted in the house being searched and nine dismembered bodies being found. Three other victims were discovered outside of Cromwell Street, too, and it’s believed there could be many more.
Fred West died by suicide in January 1995 before he could stand trial. Rose, meanwhile, was found guilty of ten murders in November 1995.
Who is Mae West, Fred and Rose West’s daughter?
Born in June 1972, Mae is the oldest surviving daughter was part of the focus of her parents’ abuse. At just five years old, Mae claims she was sexually assaulted by her uncle John, Fred’s father.
After her older sibling Anne Marie ran away in 1979, both Mae and fellow sister Heather were repeatedly sexually assaulted by Fred. The pair were forced to watch porn with their father, and reportedly told his daughters: “I made you; I can do what I like with you.” It was even reported he hoped to impregnate his daughters.
“Dad didn't make any secret of the fact he sometimes filmed [Rose] having sex,” Mae said, per the Daily Mail.
“I used to find it completely repulsive. We always knew about their interest in kinky sex. They never tried to hide it from us.
“They'd leave porn magazines lying around the house, along with bondage gear: masks, rubber suits, whips and the like.
“It wasn't unusual for us kids to come across dildos, vibrators and other sex toys just lying around the house. It amused Dad, more than anything, to see how we reacted.”
Rose, meanwhile, had started selling sex upstairs in their Cromwell Street home, meaning Mae grew up with numerous men coming and going from their house. She claimed she had to ‘book clients’ for Rose, with some men coming into the house and asking if Rose was ‘available’ while Mae was in her bedroom doing her homework.
Rose was known to have violent outbursts that she directed toward the children. Mae recalled in a 2018 interview that their mother’s beatings often landed her and her siblings at the local hospital, where their injuries were treated.
Mae left home in 1990 when she was 18, when she had a good job as a secretary and signed for a mortgage with a partner. Just four years later, she discovered the true horrors of 25 Cromwell Street. When Fred confessed to killing Heather, Mae allegedly refused to believe it, going into a state of shock.
While she initially denied her parents had abused her, Mae confessed to the police after Fred acknowledged the murders.
What has Mae West said about Fred and Rose?
Mae West released a tell-all memoir about her life growing up in such monstrous conditions. Released in 2018, Love As Always, Mum xxx was a revealing look at how Mae survived growing up at the hands of two abusive murderers. The title of the memoir comes from how Rose always signed off letters from prison.
Mae’s book focused on her relationship with mum Rose, whom some believed was beguiled and groomed by Fred, who was 12 years her senior, herself.
However, Mae wrote that Rose “wore the trousers in their marriage”, and revealed that, despite growing up in abject horrific conditions, there were elements of their family life which resembled normality.
“We ate meals and watched TV together, celebrated birthdays and Christmas, and went on family holidays,” Mae wrote. “Mum used to bake superb cakes. We’d always have a fantastic iced sponge for our birthdays and an equally lovely fruit cake laced with booze at Christmas time. She always made a real effort for special occasions and Christmas Day was the one day we really did feel like any other family.”
Mae did keep in touch with Rose even after she was convicted, although in the book she does say it was a “burden”.
She goes on to add that she never really felt any warmth of affection from her mother.
“I find it frightening now that Mum knew how she ought to behave and yet she chose not to do that, all those years she actually had us in her care,” Mae wrote. “She couldn’t be in control of her children, she didn’t want them.
“Mum copied out a prayer and sent it to me. It’s a lovely prayer, reading it made my eyes well up. But then she does this quite a lot: copies things out and sends them to me as if she’s written them herself. It’s telling of who she is, I suppose: she knows the things she should be saying, but they’re not true to her.”
Mae adds that she believes she was controlled and exploited by her mother.
“I didn’t realise it at the time,” she told the Daily Mail. “But Mum manipulated me. She started to hug me and hold my hand when I visited her. She’d never shown me any affection before. She signed all her letters ‘Love as always, Mum’, yet she’d never told me she loved me before.
“I realised eventually that she had many different faces and I got the loving one. She put all her children into different boxes and my role was to care for her.”
Mae continued: “She claimed that Dad influenced and controlled her and that she’d made a pact to stay with him as long as he didn’t harm us kids.
“But it started to sound implausible. If that was the case, why didn’t she leave when Heather went ‘missing’? You wouldn’t just accept that your daughter had disappeared, would you? And why would Mum collude in the sexual abuse? When I started to think about it all, doubts crept in.”
Love as Always, Mum xxx: The true and terrible story of surviving a childhood with Fred and Rose West
It was after Mae quizzed Rose about Heather that Rose decided to cut off all contact with her daughter.
“And I watched her squirm. I thought, ‘She’s not going to give me an honest answer for all her promises.; And she never has done. You never got straight answers. It makes it worse for the families of victims because she is the only one alive now who knows the truth — and yet she hasn’t told it.
“She’s a hypocrite. She became quite high and mighty in prison, intervening in our lives, claiming my sister Louise wouldn’t be a good parent, overlooking the fact that she and Dad had been responsible for violently and sexually abusing her.
“She was always the first to judge others, and when I realised she was treating us all differently, I told her it was grossly unfair.”
Where is Mae West now?
Following the release of her memoir in 2018, Mae has kept a low profile. She now has two adult children and lives away from the West Country.
She does, however, still remain close to her siblings.
“We’ve all coped in different ways,” she told the Daily Mail. “We’re very close. I talk to my sister Louise every day on the phone. There are very few people you can go to who share our background.
“Even in our own family, everyone has had a different experience, and as much as people try to, they can’t understand. They just don’t know what we’ve been through, do they?
“They say that families are broken up by these things, but we’ve stuck together. Actually, we’re very lucky.”
Kimberley Bond is a Multiplatform Writer for Harper’s Bazaar, focusing on the arts, culture, careers and lifestyle. She previously worked as a Features Writer for Cosmopolitan UK, and has bylines at The Telegraph, The Independent and British Vogue among countless others.
